


Masquerading as a man with a reason

by muzivitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-24
Updated: 2011-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 06:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muzivitch/pseuds/muzivitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was easy to pretend that because he couldn't feel, because he was missing his soul, that he'd become a monster. The problem was that the truth was a little more complicated than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masquerading as a man with a reason

Dean Winchester didn’t give a fuck what happened to him.

He probably wouldn’t even deny it if Sam confronted him with it; he’d probably wouldn’t say it, but there was no question that Dean would rather have Sam dead with his soul in heaven than alive the way he was now. No doubt whatsoever. It was just fascinating that Dean was so sure that that’s where Sam was going to end up. Maybe it gave him some sense of peace to assume his little brother wasn’t just going to plummet right back to hell, but Sam had the advantage of his analysis not being clouded by emotions anymore. If Death forced his soul back into his body - his broken, tortured soul that had been locked in with two enraged archangels for 180 years now - he was going to die. If he was lucky, it’d be fast. If he was very unlucky, he’d go mad first. He’d be torn apart, he would be driven beyond function, and he’d have to be put down like an animal.

He couldn’t let that happen, and no one on Heaven and Earth save one had been willing to offer him any kind of solution. Sam didn’t like the solution. He couldn’t feel, he thought, not really, but he could remember, and he didn’t want to do as Balthazar had said; he didn’t want to kill Bobby, and when he didn’t manage it, Sam found himself remembering how to be relieved.

Dean was going to need Bobby, after all, he thought as his wild hazel eyes stared up at Death, only half-listening to his words of admonishment to not scratch at the wall. Dean would need someone when this was over, because Sam was going to be dead, he managed to think as his soul was forced back into him and his lips parted on a tortured scream. This wall of Death’s was going to fall apart, it just came down to time. Maybe that’d always been the case, ever since he’d awakened alone in a Lawrence cemetery feeling wrong and empty, Sam thought as darkness covered his vision and he fell back unconscious.

Maybe the only difference now was that he had no hope that this’d end well. That he’d end well.

*

He used to pray to Castiel until his voice was hoarse from it, and when Dean got the angel’s attention with one impatient prayer, Sam was nearly ready to punch his fist through a wall. But he didn’t. There was no use in it, and Sam didn’t like wasting his time.

*

The first time he went to see Dean, he was in Lisa Braeden’s backyard grilling hamburgers and bratwurst, and showing Ben how to flip the burgers without letting all the juices run out. Dad hadn’t ever taught Dean that, Sam thought, and Dean looked mostly happy, and he should have the chance to teach his son those kinds of things. Logically, he was better off still believing that Sam was dead, and Sam kept to the shadows, watching for a moment until Lisa called from the house and Dean handed Ben a plate of grilled meat to take towards the house.

Then he left, but he kept coming back. He couldn’t truly explain why, but he was back in the shadows every few months, watching Dean teach Ben the parts of an engine using the Chevrolet truck he’d gotten for his construction job, watching Dean come home from the bar with friends, watching he and Lisa go out the way they’d watched married couples go out in every small city they’d ever gone through. Just watching, sometimes for a few days before he slipped off again to do another job. Then he’d be back.

He always came back, which is how he knew when the whole thing, the whole last request he’d made when he’d been someone else, started to crack and then crumble too fast for him to glue it back together again. It just figured that it’d be the djinn who’d get through, too, Sam thought. The daughter of the djinn who got to Dean in the first place.

After he’d spent the year diverting vampires and werewolves and a particularly pissed off witch, it had to be a djinn who managed to break the illusion he’d carefully maintained. It just figured, when you thought about it.

*

Just because he didn’t _need_ to sleep doesn’t mean he couldn’t. He didn’t, of course, but there was a reason for it, and it wasn’t because he could hunt more if he stayed awake. He didn’t sleep because when he did, he dreamed.

 _Dreams are echoes of the soul_. It sounded like something Thoreau or Emerson would have said, but Sam was sure it wasn’t. No, what it was was the truth, and when he closed his eyes and fell asleep, he knew his soul, and he wished he didn’t, because he dreamed of pain previously unimaginable, of fire and knives, of death repeating itself forever, and cruel angelic laughter of two angels who were united in only one thing. Adam was there too, and Sam dreamed of reaching out and protecting the brother he didn’t even really know. And he dreamed of never managing it, and he dreamed of it all happening again in a cruel, endless loop of pain and laughter and suffering and rage.

Then he woke up, told himself it was just a dream, and told himself to stop sleeping. Because he was who he was, it’d actually been just that easy.

*

His last thought still echoed through his mind when he woke again - alone, in Bobby’s panic room, on the same threadbare bed he’d spent too much time on in his life already - and Sam’s brows furrowed as he stared up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of it.

 _The only difference now was he had no hope that this’d end well. That **he’d** end well._

There weren’t heads or tails to make of it, Sam thought as he pushed his shaggy long hair out of dark hazel eyes and stared up at the ceiling like it was covered in answers instead of protection spells. He was alive, he somehow wasn’t in hell with Lucifer and Michael. He felt right, so right that his chest ached with it, and Sam rubbed absently at it before sitting up with a faint smile. No hope that what would end well? He wondered, and then shook his head. He had hope, he thought; whatever was ahead, of course he had hope.

He always had, that was how he was.


End file.
